Once again overnight, the Zundelsite visitor count skyrocketed - this time in no small measure thanks to yesterday's generally balanced New York Times (almost one-quarter page length) write-up about the struggle to keep the Zundelsite free of all censorship. As many Canadian papers have already done, once again a major mainstream paper has exposed the nasty, odious power grab of the Canadian self-appointed Torquemadas hiding behind the Human Rights Commission.
Here is the background story:
While I was still in Toronto, following my cross-examination for the anticipated judicial review, which our enemies fear like the devil fears the crucifix, Ernst received a request for an interview and a photo session from a reporter and a photographer of the New York Times. Since I had not yet left for California, both Ernst and I unloaded our grievances, not expecting much to come of this except perhaps two millimeters worth of mainstream media smears, next to the classifieds - you know the kind of article describing Ernst as "spewing hate", "hate mongering" etc. etc.?
The reporter, a beautiful young lady, apparently of Indian descent, who had approached Ernst during the Canadian Human Rights hearings in June already and asked for background material then, was pleasant enough and asked carefully prepared questions, but the photographer who arrived a bit later, was suffering quite visibly from having to rub shoulders with the Zundelists. He took an awful lot of pictures, commenting along the way repeatedly that he was ". . . loathe to editorialize", but did Ernst Zundel mind, ahem, if he was photographed next to the Hitler portrait?
"Not at all," said Mr. Zundel.
"How about feet on the desk?" suggested the photographer, his forehead glistening.
"Sure. Why not?" said Mr. Zundel.
"Maybe if you would point to him?"
"What a man!" said Mr. Zundel, gesturing expansively, his smile getting wider and wider. Click. "What a man!" Click. "What a man!" Click. Click. "WHAT A MAN!"
We didn't think the article would run - what with all those Jewish staffers at the NYT the article would have to pass - and because some of the answers the NYT reporter lady elicited from Ernst seemed to shake her visibly. I had firmly said my piece about the confiscation of my "Lebensraum!" trilogy by customs at the border, but I don't think that I was all that forceful. Mr. Zundel, true to style, laid it on thick about the censors of the Soviet Republic of Canada, and this girl reporter, so it seemed, left thoughtful and respectful, my triplet novels tucked into her briefcase that I had brought to town before I knew they were supposed to be "hate literature".
I was uneasy about the obvious bias displayed by the photographer, and by the obviously staged pictures that he took, but Ernst said rather somberly that was the price we had to pay. The New York Times has world-wide readers - four million, I am told - mainly in government circles and academia. Ernst told me that, invariably, entry into the big mainstream print media comes with an outlandish quote or photo as the "admission fee."
It seems we passed, for - sure enough! - what materialized yesterday, Sunday, August 2, 1998 was a remarkably informative article, unfortunately minus some of the more telling and passionate quotes or sound bytes, but with a headline we might have dreamed up! Nonetheless, the article calls for some amplification and clarification. I bring it to you in installments:
Title: "Canada Tries to Bar Pro-Nazi View on Internet: Can one nation regulate a web site based in another?"
NYT: "Just days after a pro-Nazi trilogy of novels called "Lebensraum!" was published in the United States last April, Canadian customs agents confiscated a shipment of the books at the border, contending that they promote hatred against Jews and violate Canada's anti-hate laws."
Ingrid: How serious writing immediately becomes "pro-Nazi", when it shows Germans and Germany who happened to live in the Third Reich in a positive light, has always been a mystery to me. Besides, I still haven't been notified of this official dictum - that I have contravened the "hate laws".
No detailed reasons have been given for this outrageous smear by anonymous government bureaucrats. But there it is: Even though I wrote the novel in the USA, every single word of it, long before I met Ernst Zundel, I am now tarred with the official Zundel Taint by government decree.
NYT: "The trilogy's author . . . promotes the books and the ideas they contain on a Web site she runs out of a San Diego suburb. The site is named Zundelsite, and it is filled with the words and ideas of Ernst Zundel, a Toronto resident who is one of the world's most insistent Holocaust deniers and distributors of anti-Semitic literature. The trilogy was privately published. Its title, meaning living space, is a reference to German imperialism."
Ingrid: "Two points. First, the term "Lebensraum" is ***not*** associated with German imperialism. Allied hate propaganda has hijacked the word for that purpose. In the context of my trilogy, "Lebensraum" means "living space" sought by agrarian, pious, Christian German pioneers in the steppes of Russia and in the prairies of the USA and Canada. Were our North American pioneers all German "imperialists" as they opened up the West?
"Second, I am not yet promoting the books on the Zundelsite, since my "Lebensraum!" sub-website is still under construction. But I intend to do so very soon. You see, the Zundelsite promotes more than the views of the German Canadian activist, Ernst Zundel. Only about 15% of the material on the Zundelsite are authored by the man. There is a lot ***about*** Ernst Zündel - written by me, written by others - on all kinds of Revisionist topics. So there! Yet one more time, and for the record: About half of the document count - more than 1,000 ZGrams, are copyrighted by me, 1 January, 1996 with the US Copyright Office in Washington, DC. These daily editorials are mine - even though Ernst Zundel advises me on facts, figures and details.
NYT: "Can one nation regulate a web site based in another?"
Ingrid: "Nope. Not that they will not try."
NYT: "While Canada's laws are clear on how to deal with offensive written material, they are still untested on communication that seeps across the border electronically. Canadian customs agents regularly seize books, magazines and compact disks that violate standards of decency or promote hate."
Ingrid: "That is really an oversimplification of Canada's infamous "Hate Laws." Those hate laws are decidedly one-way. The reality is that most Marxist and Zionist anti-German hate propaganda is merrily allowed into Canada unchecked.
By contrast, anything with the words "Jew" "Jewish" "Conspiracy" "Race" etc. in a title - even if it is by Jewish authors such as Maurice Samuel who wrote about his own kind in the 1920s - are seized and delivered as an intellectual mutilation trophy to the censors, much as a cat might put a bloodied mouse in front of you.
These seizures of literature are knee falls before the all-powerful, tyrannical Jewish Lobby in Canada - as ever more angry Canadians are now finding out!
Second point: "Not one word of "Lebensraum" has yet "seeped across the border" electronically. Except for pictures of the covers, the book is not yet on the Net. And I have yet to be told by any competent and authorized Canadian Government reviewer by what literary criterion or how in the name of common sense and decency my serious labor of 17 years called "Lebensraum!" can possibly ". . . violate standards of decency and promote hate."
There ought to be a definite and clearly understandable guideline or criterion given to authors - and to the public! - by censorship-prone Canadian officials. We are talking grand larceny here - not only of my intellectual property, but also of physical property worth about $15,000 retail, stolen by Canadian Government employees at the behest of self-appointed censors, one way of economically tormenting dissidents.
Who might these censors be? Can you and I not guess? We're going to find out.
Ingrid
Tomorrow:
Part II of the New York Times article - a mini-revelation!
Thought for the Day:
"The longer he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)